Two and four halves.
Now some may say that two and four halves is an improper fraction. But it makes sense here as two and four halves is the number of days that students will be missing in three weeks, due to Homecoming, Fall Break, Leopard Friday, and the PSAT testing.
All are important events, but some staff members wonder if there may be a better way to balance things out.
“I think we’re sacrificing a lot of academic time for extracurricular time,” US History teacher John Connor said. “And the extracurricular stuff is important, it is part of high school, but when we lose an entire day for Homecoming activities that could be done after school, I think we’re shortchanging our classes.”
The day lost to Homecoming activities was actually two half days, the Thursday and Friday before the game, September 29 and 30. The half day on Friday is a long-standing tradition, but the additional half day on Thursday is a new addition to the schedule.
“The days just kind of fell all at the same time,” Assistant Principal Kristen Kinnard said. “Homecoming is something that we determine based on coaches and administration on campus, but leopard Friday is determined at the district level, so we had no control over that.”
On Thursday, after going to their first four classes, students attended as a school the Mr. Lovejoy pageant, a “beauty” pageant for senior guys, and the Powder Puff football game, in which girls of different grades play each other for the coveted championship. Before this year, these activities had always been after school, but administration decided to make a change this year.
“The half day Thursday was actually Mr. Goodrich’s idea,” student council member Ashley Sereno said. “He wanted us to have a half day to increase school spirit. Student council thought it was a fun idea, so we decided to have Mr. Lovejoy and Powder Puff during the other half of the day so that the whole school can participate and watch.”
While she recognizes the importance of academics, Sereno weighs the school bonding time over the amount of class time lost in the half day.
“Being a junior, and grades really counting this year, I can see a negative side to missing the class time, but it was definitely worth it,” Sereno said. “I was excited for the whole school to get a chance to just interact with each other.”
While the half days may have school-wide benefits, it has been suggested that the timing was inconvenient due to the close proximity of other days off for students. Friday, October 7, and Monday, October 10, are Fall Break, and the Wednesday that students return (October 12), students miss half a day to take the PSAT. Two days after that, it is another half day: Leopard Friday- the last home football game of the season and a traditional spirit day. So in the course of three weeks there is not one week where students attend each class every day for five straight days.
“I don’t have any complaints against PSAT and anything like that, because it is related to academics,” Connor said. “But I think the extracurricular stuff should be just that, extracurricular, which means outside of the classroom, and when we miss so many days for it, it is affecting the learning in class and the curriculum.”
